TV review: Love and Marriage

The grandmother matriarch, played by Alison Steadman, first registered that her family was taking her for granted on the day she was to retire as a lollipop lady and her husband Ken failed to notice.

Add to that a grown-up son who still routinely empties the fridge and begs for money, and you're beginning to get the picture.

Good comedy has come from much bleaker subjects in the past, but in this case it unfortunately did not. It is not so much that the gags were poor, but that the show was weighted far more heavily towards drama than anything else.

Which is all well and good, but viewers tuning in expecting to find a laugh-out-loud sitcom, which the promoters prepared us for in all the teaser trailers, must have been disappointed.

What humour there was resembled that of a Haribo advertisement: a message to parents saying, 'Oh my! Isn't this exactly what it's like having kids?', but without any punchline behind it.

As a light drama, however, the show just about worked.

It was like many Radio 4 plays, in that it focused on middle-class characters with trials and tribulations such as winning the pub quiz to help pay for a son's rugby tour.

Other plot points included a redundancy, a baby's christening, the death of Pauline's father, Grandpa Frank, and, finally, the set-up for the remainder of the series - Pauline's decision to move into her sister's enormous home for a taste of life with no family strings attached.

The number of characters was ambitiously high for a first episode, giving the audience little time to truly connect with more than a couple of them.

Perhaps after another episode or two we will have enough emotion invested in them to care about their decisions and heartaches.

For now, though, they seemed quite one-dimensional on the whole, although that cannot be blamed on the actors, some of whom gave stellar performances.

Fortunately, one of those was lead actor and Shirley Valentine star Steadman, who has also had roles in Gavin and Stacey and The Syndicate, among many other shows.

Another performance of note came from Ugly Betty and Extras star Ashley Jensen, who played the wife of one of Pauline's sons. As usual, her delivery seemed natural and realistic.

In order to introduce such an extensive line-up, sofa scenes resembling those from When Harry Met Sally were also interspersed throughout the one-hour programme.

It may have been a necessary evil, but those to-camera conversations did not come across as a particularly strong move.

In fact, it seemed their sole purpose was to welcome in all of the cast members, as they offered neither comedy nor drama. It would be surprising if they carried over to the second episode.

Still, creating an opening show cannot be an easy task, having to introduce the characters, themes and plot tracks all at once, while keeping the whole thing watchable.

For that reason, it is probably too early to judge (who would have guessed The Simpsons would reach the heights it has after its appalling start?).

No matter what, though, one thing is for sure: Love and Marriage will not go down in history with other great British comedies.

The next episode will be on Wednesday at 9pm. As for how good it eventually gets, we'll have to wait and see.

Will Ackermann